Shadows and Waiting
by Deionarra
Summary: Ariel recognizes the benighted creature that comes to the Pillars one day. A strange little one-off set in the time of Soul Reaver I. Contains covert homoeroticism and overt indifference to vampiric life.


Disclaimer: The characters of Raziel, Ariel, and Kain are owned by Eidos Interactive, Crystal Dynamics... yes, I think that's it. Not me.  
  
"But now that I'm dead, I've learned some secrets, and one of them is this: that a woman's lot is shadows and waiting."  
  
-Kij Johnson: The Fox Woman  
  
There was one state that Ariel had not escaped in death: cold. The chill of Nosgoth's air had not left her, not in her centuries of spectral guardianship. It was no different now as she hung suspended at the side of the Pillar of Balance. Perhaps she could watch- that would distract her.  
  
Despite her lack of form, she shivered. Unlikely there was any place on Nosgoth where she could not feel the cold. It had pervaded the air, an invisible rust that marked the land's decay where the physical world could not.  
  
Footsteps.  
  
Ariel floated behind the central pillar. Kain, no doubt. Come to torture her again? Her tongue remembered the taste of bitterness, and she grimaced.  
  
It was not Kain, but the ragged creature who had come days ago. Had it been so recent? Her experience of every day was the same, there was no hope of telling them apart. From the spectral world she watched him enter, his steps slow as if he were lost in reverie. A unique creature. He was the only being she neither despised nor ignored as irrelevant. Her powers had died with her, but death offered its own gifts, and with them she sensed that something about this creature was different, half-haunted by his own significance.  
  
No, no, that had not happened yet.  
  
And now she knew that she had seen him before. Ariel frowned. Memory was scattered at best in her state. Meticulously she peeled layers of time, backward and backward, searching through the years of blurred pain for a memory, something bright and clear like sunlight in the void.  
  
He ascended the stairs and his wings cast faint confused shadows on the floor. Two empty eyes scanned the room, but did not see her.  
  
The movement of his head caused the cowl around his neck to stretch, and designs that had been distorted by the cloth's folds settled into their true patterns. White lines fell from his eyes and curved around like question marks.  
  
Ah. Ariel's eyes widened, then pensively closed. She remembered. As if throwing back curtains, she let the memory pour clear and fresh into her mind.  
  
********************************************************  
  
Kain sat draped over his throne, one leg propped up on the left arm and the other fallen on the floor. The Soul Reaver leaned against his body, held in place by his talons at the hilt. It was a deceptively lazy pose, and Raziel knew that as he stepped through the doorway of the pillar room. Kain did not bring out the Soul Reaver for casual calls.  
  
The firstborn was a fine creature with a flair for making a good show. He showed it in his confident steps, the way he handled his tabard knowing it would make every move more dramatic. It was etched in his features: the thin-drawn eyebrows, the hair made to look sophisticated, the reserved and expressionless lips. Yet he was no mere peacock content to preen and admire himself. His body showed that even for a vampire his strength was enviable.  
  
Kain watched his oldest son walk up to the dias and kneel before his father. Raziel spoked with his head still downcast. "You sent for me, my lord?"  
  
The master vampire twisted the hilt of the Soul Reaver, watching the blade rotate with its point against the ground, until Raziel looked up. "So I did." He stood up in a sudden movement, leaving the ancient sword propped against the throne. "And you still have the propriety to respond... how kind."  
  
"My lord...?"  
  
Kain smirked. "For now, at least." His movement around his son could best be described as a stalk. "Yes, we can yet come to agreement on that much."  
  
The firstborn stood hesitantly, as if he was no longer sure he could. "If I may... yours was the hand that drew me back from the bleak wastes of death. I have served you since my creation. Nothing has changed tha-"  
  
"But it has, Raziel." Kain's voice behind him, sharp and guttural. Raziel held himself stiffly, repressing a flinch as Kain's claws settled on his shoulder. "You are a different man from the cringing walking that first crawled from your tomb."  
  
Raziel's neck half-twitched as Kain leaned forward, as if he had meant to turn his head but decided against it. The vampire master's broad chest was mere inches from the firstborn's back, and the space between them bristled with energy. They were close enough that Kain deemed it unnecessary to speak above a whisper.  
  
"Quite a yearling you've become, boy." From the side of his eye, Raziel glimpsed yellow flesh parting around long fangs. "Almost... extraordinary." Kain's free hand found unexposed flesh at Raziel's side. "Powerful. Possessed of strength in mind and body in equal measure."  
  
Kain withdrew and Raziel half-closed his eyes, his muscles visibly releasing tension. He did not see the grim satisfaction in his father's face. "All things in a firstborn that should make his father proud."  
  
Raziel's head snapped back as Kain dug his claws into his hair and yanked. Golden eyes flashed in surprise and anger, then shut in pain as Kain pulled again, drawing Raziel's strained neck against his shoulder. The firstborn's arms twitched at his side, then lay still- he had already learned that when Kain delivered punishment, it was better to submit.  
  
Kain bared his fangs and grinned wickedly at his son's impotent rage. "You will remember, Raziel," he said, savoring every word, "that pride is the deadliest of the sins."  
  
In a blur of movement no human eye could register, Kain stepped aside and yanked down. As his son toppled, he grabbed the tabard that flew past and pulled it free. Raziel rolled to his side and sprang to his feet with a speed that rivaled his maker's. He carried his strength with the fluid ease of a great cat.  
  
"Father, what madness is upon you?" The glare of his golden eyes belied the respect in his tone.  
  
Kain looked over the red cloth in his claws. "Did you know, Raziel, that human young have generated a distinct name for the knowledge of their elders? They call it... senility." He let go and the tabard see-sawed its way to the floor. "So they seem all those gifted with sight beyond their reach. The virtues of foresight, clairvoyance, and intuition go under new names- delusion, paranoia, madness. It seems your perception is yet tainted by the ignorance of the herd."  
  
"I don't know what you mean."  
  
"Oh no?" Kain stepped toward him, ignoring the tabard under his hoof. Raziel reflexively backed away. "And if you did- child- how forward would you be in admitting it?"  
  
They stood eying each other for a moment of stillness.  
  
Kain moved first. Raziel had time to throw up one arm in a futile defense, and it was not enough. Kain fell upon him like a pouncing wolf, his half-snarling expression unchanged as the two hit the floor. The firstborn flailed wildly, something that only annoyed his maker further. Roughly Kain gripped his son's shoulder and turned, shoved it into the ground. Raziel cried out as bone shattered against stone, the same stone that ground against his skull as Kain used one hand to pin his head down. The greater vampire straddled Raziel's body for a more secure position and barely noticed as the firstborn struggled underneath him. The boy could hardly move anyway. His head was being held to the ground, one shoulder was broken, and the weight and strength of Nosgoth's emperor bore down on him.  
  
"Now..." Kain's expression became more business-like. With his free hand he ripped at Raziel's armor, methodically tearing all coverings from his back. Raziel buckled furiously, but he was contained. The older vampire relentlessly continued his work, tossing aside bits of armor and cloth he could not be bothered to properly remove.  
  
Kain's claws paused in the air. His son's back lay exposed to the air, the muscles sliding under his skin as Raziel continued to claw at anything in reach. Kain laid his talons on Raziel's back, and all movement ceased. It was a tempered body sloping up and down in shapes Kain quietly appreciated: the knobs of his spine, the thin strips of flesh folding together on his shoulder blades.  
  
Athletic certainly, perhaps even beautiful. In the end, still normal.  
  
Kain's eyes flashed and the half-snarl returned. The marble around them was sprayed suddenly with blood as he ripped his claws into Raziel's exposed back. The vampire's body jerked helplessly, his crushed jaws letting out a muffled cry of pain, but there was nothing he could do. Kain's talons burrowed into unprotected flesh and yanked free, the way a dog dug a hole with one paw. Blood glistened dark red on his yellowed skin.  
  
This was the only part of the memory that grew dim. The struggled awakened her, and she had watched. But Ariel could not remember why she had interfered.  
  
Kain noticed the flash of light by the Balance Pillar. Raziel, his golden eyes shut tightly, did not. The vampire master looked up- he had looked so like a rabid dog. White hair fell over one shoulder, speckled like fine sugar with blood. All of his weight was supported by the arm that held Raziel's head down, and it only reinforced the image in her mind- a sitting dog, one bloody paw raised, eyes wild with hate.  
  
"It matters not to me what tortures you visit on your subjects, vampire." Ariel glanced at the firstborn. He lay on his stomach, head turned away from her, his back ripped open and an unnaturally dark red against his pale white skin. "...but your depraved antics have successfully woken the dead. Take them where there is no one watching."  
  
Kain stood up, leaving Raziel prone on the ground. He seemed not to care that he was covered in his son's blood and gave Ariel his usual arrogant smirk. "It was not my intention, dear Ariel, to interrupt your endless brooding. But, now that you're here." He cast a contemptuous glance at Raziel. "Are you inclined to join us?"  
  
"You are a fool, Kain."  
  
"Come now. You wouldn't say *that* if you knew what I knew."  
  
"No. You would still be a fool."  
  
Kain chuckled with his mouth closed. "Perhaps... but is a man who acts on concealed knowledge of time's currents still a fool?"  
  
Ariel frowned and drifted closer. "What?"  
  
"My apologies... are you ignorant of what lies beneath the Oracle's cave to the north?"  
  
She ignored his patronizing smirk. "What did you see?"  
  
Kain turned his head to look at her sidelong. The smug bastard, always playing one game or another. But it seemed he wanted to tell her... if only to demonstrate his cleverness. The vampire waved in Raziel's direction. "Wings."  
  
If she had a physical body, she would have slapped him. So this was how the vampire resolved his problems? Perhaps the pillars deserved him if they selected so poor a guardian.  
  
"How long did you look?"  
  
"Long enough, spectre."  
  
"More than once?"  
  
"Why- does time shift whenever one looks at it?"  
  
Ariel noted that the wounds in Raziel's back had closed over. "Has your guardianship taught you nothing, Kain? You can learn but little from a single glance, for all the spokes of time are connected. What- one look and you came running here?" Her laugh was bitter. "Ah, Kain, Kain... deluded Kain..."  
  
"More deluded than a dead wench expecting a vampire to lay down his life for humans?"  
  
"Your pettiness cannot reach me, Kain."  
  
"Neither can your ill-conceived attempts at lessons reach me." He lied, of course. She could see it in the schemes already beginning to brew in his eyes.  
  
"Then look again, for amusement." She let herself fade. The conversation had tired her, but that was expected. It *was* Kain. "Prove Ariel wrong."  
  
Raziel had slipped into torpor. But he must have lived- she was there the night he lost his wings. She had always been there.  
  
********************************************************  
  
The reborn Raziel, the ghost-vampire, stood at the pillars now. Ariel watched him, unseen as before. Did he remember? He could not have. They had spoken and he had not remembered her- her, or how she had once saved his life. Judging by his new form, though, perhaps it was not a favor.  
  
Shattered spirits, the both of them, and still disconnected. With a pang she realized she had never quite accustomed herself to being eternally alone.  
  
But she did what she could.  
  
Raziel turned at the flash of white light. Ariel looked down at Kain's betrayed firstborn, her only chance of salvation. She saw him, even as a vampire the only being that was her kindred, a lone immortal who could not quite be free. Even if they had no connection and the length of their conversations was outlasted by the span of a dream.  
  
He looked up at her drifting form expectantly.  
  
Ariel smiled. "May you find peace here, Raziel..."  
  
There was nothing more to say. The spectre quietly closed her eyes and faded. 


End file.
